Comedian recalls ‘irritating’ experience working with Salman Khan at IIFA, reveals ‘bhai type actor’ had co-host replaced, demanded a car out of jealousy

Laughing about Salman turning his back on fans while they were getting laathi-charged on his birthday, Raunaq sad, “He’s got a vibe to him. He’s got this whole, ‘I’m Mr Bollywood’ about him. We were writing for the IIFA awards, and he’s trying to tell us to do something; the writers, to add something. But he’s sitting (three feet away) and he tells his guy, and his guy talks to me.”

Mimicking Salman, Raunaq said, “‘Tell them, script mein aisa daalne ka hai’. And the guy looks at me and says, ‘Bhai ne bola aisa daalne ka hai’. But I was trying to talk to him.” Raunaq then mimed Salman’s assistant telling him not to address the actor directly, and speak only to him. “I just found it irritating,” he said.

Raunaq then recalled another story, but he didn’t take Salman’s name directly, and instead referred to him as a ‘bhai of an actor’ who had multiple cases against him, including one for his driving. “What happens is, there’s this big car company who’s the sponsor of this awards show. And they want to give a car that they’re launching to their brand ambassador, who’s this really loud actor. The thing is that he’s supposed to be getting this car. Bhai actor is like, ‘F**k you, I’m the biggest actor here, I should be getting the car’. But the brand is like, ‘You have a case against you, that will look bad on our car’. So he was like, ‘Then I will not let this awards show happen’.”

Raunaq then revealed what really ‘p*ssed off’ the ‘bhai kind of guy’ actor. He said, “So, basically, he has a sister, who was dating this actor. That actor is dating his sister-in-law now, and he was supposed to be one of the hosts of this awards show, but bhai was like, ‘You have broken my family, I will ruin your life’. And in that anger, he was like, ‘Gaadi bhi mereko hi milega’.”

He wanted the team to change the award show script, Raunaq said, describing the star as as ‘an annoying brat’. He also narrated another story about ‘the bhai type guy’ having a fight with a ‘sad-type singer’. Raunaq said that he was in the sound box, looking at the stage, and the singer got called on. “The bhai-type actor is just standing there, watching the singer get a big award, and he looks at me and he goes, ‘I have to deal with this also’. And I found it so funny, he’s self-aware about the fact that he hates him. He used the word ‘also’, because he knew I knew about the brother-in-law,” he said.